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calm

adjective · noun · verb

Simple meaning

Free of noise and disturbance.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kahm
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈkɑm

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. of a place or situation

    Free of noise and disturbance.

  2. of a person

    Peaceful, quiet, especially free from anger and anxiety.

  3. of weather

    Free from storm or wind

  4. of weather

    Without wind or storm.

  5. of water

    With few or no waves on the surface; not rippled.

noun

  1. in a person

    The state of being calm; peacefulness; absence of worry, anger, fear or other strong negative emotion.

verb

  1. Become quiet or calm, especially after a state of agitation

  2. Make steady

  3. Make calm or still

  4. Cause to be calm or quiet as by administering a sedative to

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (of a place or situation) Free of noise and disturbance.

Used this way, calm is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

calm voicecalm weatherperfectly calmcalm seacalm waterremained calm

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • calmingnounInflected form

    The act of appeasing (as by acceding to the demands of).

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • calmnessnounDerived noun

    Steadiness of mind under stress.

  • calmlyadverbDerived adverb

    With self-possession (especially in times of stress).

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • calm airnounCompound term

    Wind moving at less than 1 knot.

  • calm downverbCompound term

    Become quiet or calm, especially after a state of agitation.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

adjective

Sense: free of noise and disturbance

noun

Sense: being calm

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.